LOL - Buckytom - those were prices from just a couple of weeks ago! These are not "National name brand" stuff. The tuna I have to buy when it is on sale (2/$1) - but the box-mac and peas I can usually get any time 5/$1 at a little store about 3-miles down the road.

Once upon a time I went to Harvard, and MIT! I also went to the real Cheers, ate at The Frog and a few other places in Boston .... went to a college radio station in Lowell ... had a pizza that should have had a skull and crossbones on it (had to be 2-pounds of green bell peppers and onions on it with about 2-Tablespoons of tomato sauce) and did a bunch of other stuff I hardly remember ... what a birthday!

ronjohn - I have an Asian market on the other side of town that I used to frequent every week or two (when I lived on that side of town) ... I can do a dozen different things with Ramen Noodles, too! Give me some frozen and/or dried peas/corn, some dried shrimp/fish, and a sauce of some kind .... When my sons were younger we used to go and just pick up stuff (very few cans had any English on them so we just looked at the pictures and made up things to cook based on the pictures). Yep - we got some suprises - but we managed to figure out what to do with it .... if nothing else we doubled the rice. I guess before the "Iron Chefs" we were the original "Tin Can Chefs"?

You don't have to be rich to eat something that taste good.

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"It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

I went to North Texas State University, in Denton, Texas, in the triangle of Dallas, Fort Worth and Denton. That's the first place I ever had a taco, or any Mexican food, for that matter.
My goodness, those Sigma Nu guys were fun...it was a lot like the movie, "Animal House".
Then I got marrried, had a child, a divorce, and headed to Southern Illinois University in 1970. What a trip that was! Fortunately, I had a little girl to take care of, and she meant more to me than anything else, so I kept my act together.
They had to close the University that spring, after the Kent State event. We had a lot of rioting on campuss, the National Guard came in...it just got too dangerous.

of course there's chopped up dogs mixed into a can o' baked beans. add any available diced veggies like peppers, cauliflower, tomatoes, and potatoes. heat and stir until the veggies are soft (nuke the potatoes first), then top with chopped raw onion and melted cheese.
when i was a kid, i thought i would be a good cowboy because i loved this meal. this is what cowboys eat, don't they?

another one is fried dog balls. put a package of hot dogs, wrapper removed and discarded, into a blender and pulse blend until it is like ground meat. mix with an egg, shell removed and discarded, and a cup of breadcrumbs, and a good squirt of mustard. roll into balls.
put corn flakes in a plastic bag, beat until they resemble fine breadcrumbs, then roll the dog balls in the corn flake crumbs, and fry in oil, turning to fry each side. deep fry if possible.